OUR LATEST ISSUE
Hard landscaping
urn
If thereââ¬â¢s one thing Iââ¬â¢ve learned over the years, itââ¬â¢s the critical importance of hard landscaping
Few gardens can make a successful impression through the winter months without some form of non-plant structure.
I’m thinking particularly of walls, paths, obelisks and urns.
Our garden in Suffolk benefits from a recently built walled garden against the north facing aspect of which we’re growing half a dozen stunning itea illicifolia (a sinfully underused plant, and one of my favourite evergreen climbers – it produces fabulous long green tassels in June/ July).
So we used the lines of the outer walls of the enclosed garden as a guide for a series of wide stone paths (1.5m is the absolute minimum for a path if you can spare the space as it allows for two adults to amble side by side – also do remember, the wider the path, the slower the gait).
We then intersected these paths with a series of pauses: a sundial; an urn on a plinth centred within a round bed of rosemary; a small 2 meter diameter brick roundel; an ornamental potting shed; and so on.
And it’s these very paths and urns and obelisks that provide desperately needed pattern and form during those months when all there is to look at are bare trees, a few miserable winter blooms and beds full of rotting herbaceous material (in the same way decent tits and big arms can often compensate for an ugly face!).
And it’s just as important in a small garden. I recently designed a garden where I removed the ghastly little lawn completely and installed a large circular path in-filled with masses of alchemilla, salvias, hellebores and alliums, plonked an ancient moss-covered urn on plinth in the middle, and voila!
Just one word of caution: there’s a fine line between statue and gnome – don’t cross it!
